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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814932">the world on top of ours</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/woollen_pharaohs/pseuds/woollen_pharaohs'>woollen_pharaohs</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Knives Out (2019), Midnight Special (2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Swap, Crossover, M/M, post knives out and post midnight special</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:20:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,638</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814932</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/woollen_pharaohs/pseuds/woollen_pharaohs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Continued approximately 5 years after the events of my Midnight Special fic <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953735">'after rainfall'</a>, Roy wakes up in the same body but in a different world where Alton is alive and Lucas is not. </p><p>(Basically this fic is Freaky Friday with a seasoning of angst and gay longing.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lucas/Roy Tomlin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Gay Michael Shannon Thirst Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ok, look. Knives Out is about the closest i'll ever get to a Midnight Special sequel and i'm not about to let Michael Shannon and Jacob Martell being cast in the same movie go to waste. Basically welcome to the Midnight Special/Knives Out crossover fic that literally (zero) people care about aside from myself. </p><p>If you've actually clicked on the title and read this far, thank you, and hope you enjoy...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>one. </b>
</p><p> </p><p>   One time, before Alton was born, Roy left Lucas when he didn’t have to, so every night he holds Lucas tight to make up for it. Lucas’ hands fit around Roy’s body like they’re made to, lips and legs and hips, they fit together because they were never made to be apart. They were meant to love each other. Meant to entwine and erupt, hot cum spurting out of Roy and into Lucas’ adjoined mouth. A suddenness that is plateaued by the caressing afterglow. </p><p>   The easterly winds and the westerly winds pull together over their cabin in a rare collision like starved lovers. With their ferocious rushes of wind comes lightning that illuminates the foothills visible out of Roy and Lucas’ window as bright as daylight. The two women, the easterly and the westerly, put on a brilliant show. Wind heaving in and out of the cracks in the windows, shaking the window panes, the rafters creaking, the fine bristles of Lucas’ unshaven face wriggling in the movement of air and light. </p><p>   Lucas sleeps through it all. Roy watches, content with his life and his love, and the brilliance of the sky though it had woken him. The wind pushes a cold through their quaint room but it is impervious to Roy’s comfort. A comfort that he has known with Lucas, and a comfort, too, similar to the way Alton would make him feel when he shared the light. On the distant shrubbed hilltops, where the lightning ignites the sky, fragments of the sleek, grey architecture skews out of the landscape -- the architecture from Alton’s world. On a clear day, he sometimes sees those grand geometric shapes in the distance, oscillating around a city skyscraper or a Home Depot. Here, now, the windmill blade of a large concrete structure clips through the wall. </p><p>   He jumps, clinging to Lucas, who snores in his sleep. The concrete blade continues to pierce through his bedroom wall without a trace of rubble, a soundless smash amongst the clapping thunder. The blade turns upward in its rotation, and he expects it to fade, like usual, but another windmill blade joins where it had first entered the building. It phases through the wall in the same place as the other just as the first phases through the ceiling. He rubs his eyes having never seen the other-world architecture as close as he is now. The minute he removes the balls of his palms from his eyes, all he can see is grey. </p><p>   The grey encompasses him. It’s all he can see until there’s a flash of blue, true lightning, then darkness. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p><b>&amp; two.</b> </p><p> </p><p>   Roy dozes, aware that his body is lying down on a comfortable mattress, his eyes closed, his breathing even. He dreams of Lucas. </p><p>   In the early morning, he wakes feeling as if he’s been asleep at sea, an unevenness, an instability that affects beyond his physicality to the core of his being. He lies in his bed for a long time with unopened eyes, trying to find the balance. It doesn’t settle. </p><p>   When he does open his eyes, a thin, whispy white curtain fades the morning light to a creamy yellow. He slowly adjusts to the light and his wider surroundings. He’s lying in a four poster bed with a canopy, two thick pillows beneath his head and heavy, claustrophobic bedding tucked around him. A tilt of his neck reveals a woman sleeping beside him. Blonde, but a darker, glossier blonde than Sarah’s ever was. </p><p>   He recoils into himself like a salted slug at his supposed dream state. The longer he waits to slip out of the dream, the more present he feels in the overly comfortable bed. It doesn’t make any sense. He tries to think back to the night before, of spending it with Lucas, of the pleasure they shared, and the tremendous thunderstorm that had rushed over their isolated cottage out in the woods. He had seen the lightning, and heard the wind rattling the windows in their frames, and seen the great grey structures pierce through his walls like nothing. </p><p>   It was like the day he said goodbye to Alton. Sarah and Alton had evaded the military and Roy and Lucas were in that station wagon. The rubber on the left wheel had come clean off from driving over the barbed wire blockades. There were military grade cars behind them and in front of them on the long strip of road and above them was something he’d never seen before, though it felt familiar to see. Like the face of a friend of a friend, who’s talked about fondly but you’ve never had the pleasure of meeting, not for years. Huge arcs of concrete appeared over the road, miles high. A curved tower with a sail encircling it. A glass dome glittering in the sunlight. Each structure as monumental and incredulous as the next, and at the same time, seemingly devoid of human life. </p><p>   He saw the world on top of ours, as Alton would say, but had he said goodbye to Lucas?</p><p>   Roy sits up and swings his legs out of bed. The moment he presses his feet on the ground is the moment he realises that he can’t, not equally, because one foot is encased in a cast. He tries to wriggle his toes inside the case, and feels a small tingle of pain. A walking stick is resting against the bedside table. Behind the walking stick’s black, shiny handle lies an expensive looking watch over the bedside table, and a stack of books all by the same author. Not a speck of dust can be seen on the books, or the bed, or the floor, or the walls. It’s a superficial kind of clean, chemical. Not like the natural air that pervades his and Lucas’ cottage. </p><p>   Roy pushes to his feet, opting not to use the walking stick. He moves slowly, methodically, trying not to wake the woman still sleeping in the bed by the sound of his foot cast thudding against the plush carpet. He rounds the end of the four poster bed, and is slowly shuffling past the woman on his way to the bedroom door when the woman stirs. The heavy blankets slide off her shoulders, falling behind her back. She’s wearing a silk nightie. The sight of her is so completely odd. Roy hasn’t shared a bed with a woman since Sarah and even then it was very clinical. </p><p>   Her mouth falls open and she murmurs, “I think… You’ve made the right decision.”</p><p>   Her eyes hadn’t opened so Roy waits, frozen in place. Her chest rises and falls as if in deep sleep. Soon he returns to his laborious walk, treading quietly, slowly. An owl’s morning hoot can be heard through the slightly ajar window behind him, but it doesn’t sound like the owls native to his cottage. Where has the other world transported him?</p><p>   A cream lathered hallway extends to his right and left, the expanse of it with its numerous diverting doorways has an effect on him like vertigo. Behind him, the plush, incandescent brightness of the room behind him burns him like the fingertips of flames and the pale, artificially lit hallway poses to drown him. </p><p>   “Lucas?!” He cries out, his jaw lathered in sticky morning saliva. “Lucas!” </p><p>   “What?” </p><p>   The reply comes from a great distance, but his heart hooks on it. He stomps down the hallway following that sound. </p><p>   “Lucas!” </p><p>   An annoyed grunt, “What?!”</p><p>   Roy rounds a corner and enters a beaming white kitchen which is as pristine as the laboratories the military took him to when he was captured. He was made to sit. They would attach various pads and wires to his head and hook them up to humming machines and they would try and make him access the other world, to make Roy show them what Alton showed them all in that radial sphere. It never amounted to anything, but he sees Alton now. Older, maybe four or five years older. He’s sitting at the kitchen island with his elbows on the counter, eating cereal. </p><p>   Roy can’t get to him fast enough. The polyfibre material of his cast slips against the tiles as he lurches toward Alton, stubs his bare foot against the island as he rounds it but pays no mind to the pain, only wants to get to his son. He throws his arms around him, pulling him in tight and almost taking the kid off the bar stool if it weren’t for the fact that Alton’s so big now. </p><p>   “Stop -- I can’t -- breathe!” Alton wheezes. </p><p>   For a minute, Roy can’t process Alton’s words. A thousand thoughts are racing through his mind. Alton. This kitchen. This house. This world. His world. The grey. The storm. Lucas. </p><p>   “Dad!” Alton squeaks. </p><p>   Roy loosens his grip, but doesn’t let go. He holds Alton by his shoulders and studies him. Unbridled tears spring in his eyes and stream down his face. He presses Alton to his chest again. The spoon that Alton was eating his cereal with slips off the counter and clatters to the ground. </p><p>   “Alton,” Roy says, fondly pressing his son’s head to his chest. </p><p>   “Walt?” Comes a worried woman’s voice from his periphery. </p><p>   Roy presses his lips on Alton’s head, tastes a touch of gel and says to himself, to Alton, to Lucas, to Sarah, “Alton’s back.”</p><p>
  <span> Alton fights his way free, the bar stool scraping across the floor in his effort to put distance between them. His hands draw to fix his hair and he says, “Mom, why is he calling me that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy looks at the lady in a fluffy dressing gown standing in the kitchen. She looks at him as if she knows who he is, but his behaviour is alien. He looks at her as if he has never seen her before in his life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I don’t know.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>so i wasn't sure about posting this as a chapter fic with an undefined end but tbh i'm just putting my feelers out for how many people might actually be interested in this. we all know low hits aren't going to stop me though. I'm in this deep, lonely hole i dug myself and i intend to keep digging. </p><p>peace!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>  He can't take their eyes staring at him, eyes of confusion and despair and so he tries to get out. The cast on his right foot smacks the tiles like a hammer on ice. At night in the prison cells, there was an incessant sound of a butter knife hitting the slate wall of someone’s cell. Every night, bang, bang, bang. It was their night owl. He couldn’t forget that he was a fugitive. He and Lucas. They and many others had escaped in a flood that broke down the prison fences and behind the nearest door he finds in this kitchen, he expects to come face to face with the masked scientists who experimented on him day in and day out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   But it’s another bleak hallway. He stomps down it and finds the gleaming face of an elevator. There are frantic footsteps behind him. He wants to wake up. He wants to wake up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He slams the down button on the lift. Sweat trickles down his forehead. His foot in the cast aches, his bare foot on the carpet burns. Voices draw closer. The light above the lift circles too slowly. He wipes sweat off his mouth with his hand and pushes open the stairwell door. Flights upon flights of stairs twist downward in an endless corkscrew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The descent takes carries him quicker than his hobbled run can handle. He slips on the step at the first landing and kicks it against the concrete wall, shattering the cast to pieces. He shakes off the plastic that clings to his hot skin and runs down the stairs unimpeded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Lucas!" He cries, throwing his voice down the spiral.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Dad!" Comes Alton's voice from above. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   His son’s voice paralyses him. He stares upwards at Alton hanging over the rails. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Dad stop!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   His heart beats in his throat. Far away, Alton's face looks small and terrified. The grey of the staircases looms over him, jagged pieces of concrete interwoven as if they're made of wool. He feels light headed. His feet throb. The grey of the stairs seems closer but unlike the night before because when his body hits the stairs, it hurts like hell. </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   He wakes up with a cast on his foot in the bed that's too cushioned. A sparkling, yellow day filters through the half open window of this unfamiliar bedroom. He hopes this isn't some kind of groundhog day situation, but he knows it's not because there's no woman sleeping next to him. That feels normal, at least. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Before Roy can collect his thoughts, the blond woman emerges through the bedroom door with a mug of coffee in hand. "Oh good, you're awake.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy blinks at her. A cool breeze cuts through the open window, prompting him to pull his blankets up to his chin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "You scared me half to death this morning. I had to get Mr Johnson from downstairs to help carry you back to bed, then I called the doctor to make a house visit and reset the cast. Luckily he operates on a retainer fee or he would never have answered my call.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She sets the steaming coffee down on the bedside table, nudging aside the watch and the pile of clean, new books, each by an author by the name of Harlan Thrombey. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She sits down on the bed next to Roy and folds one knee over the other. When she places her hand on Roy’s stomach, her fluffy dressing gown drops open, revealing the same silk nightie she had been wearing earlier. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Where am I?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The lady's brow knits together, the weight of her hand feels heavier. "The doctor said your head might be a bit foggy from your fall, but don't worry, I made sure a hospital visit was not necessary. I know how much you hate hospitals."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She smiles and touches his wrist. He flinches and pulls away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Where's Lucas?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She tutts her tongue. "I don't know who that is, Walt, but you don't have to worry. You're at home, with me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She leans down and tries to kiss him but he turns his face, heat rushing to his cheeks out of embarrassment and humiliation, knowing that this person is trying to take care of  and love the body he inhabits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "I'm sorry, I…" Roy mumbles. He stares at the empty side of the bed, reaching for the warmth that should be there, or not here, but with him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "No," she says, pushing to her feet and wrapping her dressing gown tight around herself. "I should let you rest. The doctor said you're going to have to be in the cast another two months now so…" She places her hand around the nape of her neck and barely makes eye contact with Roy. "I don’t know what we’re going to do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The silence weighs on them both. Eventually, the woman stands up and shakes herself, a faux smile growing on her face. She crinkles her eyes in a chemical warmth and tells him, “I'll let you rest." </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   He sleeps, but the dreams he dreams are forced. He wants the safety and the silence of their home. He wants Lucas’ arms wrapped around him. He wants the only other person in the whole world who understands him, who knows what he’s been through. There’s Sarah, but Sarah disappeared with Alton too, hadn’t she?</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><hr/><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>   “Thank you for coming, Linda, I didn’t know who else to call.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Of course, Donna. Tell me what happened.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I think he was having a nightmare.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He can hear their voices through the walls as if they’re standing in the bathroom with him. His supposed wife and supposed sister. He doesn’t have either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Walt? A sleepwalker? No. If he was a sleepwalker, I would know,” Linda says loudly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He’s combing his hair. Walt’s wife says that he does it differently now, but Roy is happy to do away with the goatee and embrace the familiar clean shaven face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Well I don’t know how else to explain why he’s acting this way!” Donna sounds distressed. “We had a long discussion the night before and he decided that he was going to make the new CEO of the publishing company stand down so that he could have his job back. Now he’s acting like he doesn’t remember that at all!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Well he can’t have had a change of heart. What are you all going to do without him in that position? Walt would never let you go back to teaching. I’ll talk to him. Let me talk to him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy locks the bathroom door. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   He finds out that he's in Boston, MA, over 1000  miles away from the cottage he built with Lucas in Wisconsin. They had been through too many familiar southern states to get Alton from Texas to Florida, so they needed a place to live where people wouldn’t ask questions, where nobody knew them, or would want to. They’re pretty self sufficient. Only go into Three Lakes when the winter is too rough and they need to pick up some manual labourer work to help keep the fire going. That, and pick up books to read. Roy never read mysteries before. How is he to know if the Thrombeys existed in his world too? They’re not half bad books, now that he’s had the opportunity to read them. Probably made a lot of people happy, including Walt. There’s at least ten in every room of the house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He can’t walk for a week and during this time of rest, he decides what he’s going to do while the other two people in the house skirt around him like he’s made of glass. What they don’t know is that the glass has already shattered. A fissure that’s broken him in two. He’s no longer the man who housed a family in the top floor of an apartment block yet has no money through bad financial decisions. That’s not his problem. His problem is Lucas. And he intends to finds him as soon as he can. </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   Roy presses his hands together and shoves them between his thighs. He’s sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen island with his right foot hanging off the stool frame like a dead weight. Next to him, Jacob, who looks identical to Alton, starts up his laptop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy tries not to stare, knowing that it puts the kid on edge but he wonders why the other people, the people of the world on top of theirs, have moved him here and shown him a version of Alton who doesn’t remember the version of Roy. He was almost happy when he was bedridden and he didn’t see Alton for days. He couldn’t ever forget about Alton, but he would like to not know a version of Alton who doesn’t know Roy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “So,” Jacob starts, “Who am I looking for?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Lucas,” Roy states. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Yeah I can’t just type one word into the search bar,” Jacob says dryly. “Do you have a surname?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   A surname… He stares at the thin silver laptop on top of the white counter. The silver is almost gray, and he begs it to expand into one of those brilliant architectural structures and encompass him, knock him out, take him back to the world he knew, where Lucas was, where Alton wasn’t… But this isn’t Alton. This is someone else with his features and his voice and nothing else. No warmth to share, or kindness in his heart. This Alton, this Jacob, is not his descendant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “All you’ve talked about for the past week is this guy Lucas, and now you’re telling me that you don’t even know his full name?” Jacob mocks him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “That’s because he is a figment of your father’s imagination!” Donna announces from the lounge behind them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She’s drinking a glass of prosecco at 10am on a Saturday morning. She had tried to kiss him this morning, and he had pulled away. He had tried to apologise with his eyes but she didn’t understand him. Lucas always knew what he meant without him having to say it. He’s too used to it. So he doesn’t know how to talk to stranger who thinks she’s his wife. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “His surname… is my surname…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Lucas Thrombey, alright,” Jacob says, starting to type, but stops at Roy’s voice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “No,” He says too loudly. The word cracks in the open plan room, dividing living room from kitchen, and breaking the floor beneath him. His name is… his name is Roy Tomlin. Not Walt Thrombey. But his surname isn’t Tomlin either… Not anymore… He took Lucas’ name three years ago. A wedding officiated by the wildlife of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Why can’t he remember the name of his lover?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “No?” Jacob presses expectantly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Not… Thrombey,” Roy mumbles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob waits. Donna chokes out a scoff. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob sighs. “As I said, Dad, I can’t just type in ‘Lucas’. It’s going to show up a billion results. You really need to be more specific.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “He was a state trooper,” Roy says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   A good one. Hours and hours in the night they drove with Alton in the back, the car as dark as night. Lucas drove with an intensity that was not aggressive or threatening, but evoked concentration and belief in their task in getting Alton to where he was meant to be. This is not where Alton is meant to be now, and it’s Lucas they’re trying to find. It’s Lucas he’s trying to find with concentration and a belief that this is what he’s meant to do, but he has felt no warmth or comfort in this world, and he doesn’t know if what he’s doing is right. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Okay… There’s about three million results for ‘Lucas state trooper’. Got anything else to narrow it down?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy hugs the underside of his thighs causing his shoulders to buckle in. The forever white floor threatens to swallow him whole. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “If you really want to find this guy, you should just hire that detective Ransom hired. Except I heard Ransom posted him 50k to do the job. I don't know if Marta will give us that much."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Who's Marta?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Jacob, don't encourage him, please! This whole ordeal is driving me insane!" Donna says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The sound of her wine glass chinking against the coffee table rings in his ears. Donna sweeps around the couch and swoops behind him, throwing her arms around his waist and nestling her face in the crook of his neck. He doesn't push her away, just sits rigid with his back to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Walt, please… just go and ask for your job back so everything can go back to normal."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy doesn't say anything. His hands have lost circulation under his own weight. He lets her hug him because he understands that she needs it, as he needs her to be Lucas. </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   He doesn't like to have to ask for money. If it wasn't a matter of urgency, he wouldn't, but his new world's identity affords him an easy outlet to get the funds that would enable him to travel to Wisconsin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   "Are you going to knock or what?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob stands beside him, a blue glow emanating from his phone. Years ago he stood on Lucas’ doorstep like this, cloaked in the night, Alton’s blue goggles strapped tight to his head. It irks him that in this world, Walt might have gotten to be with Alton more. He mightn’t have been parted from him at birth, and been fortunate enough to raise him, to spend time with him. Roy never got that. Or at least, it wasn’t only him raising Alton. It was the whole Ranch. A shared parenthood. They made sure to tell Alton who his birth parents were, but the possession ended at a bloodline. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Did Walt spend time with you?” Roy asks quietly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The air vibrates between them. Alton looks up. Roy wants to envelope his arms around his son. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Alton doesn’t respond, his mouth agape in confusion. Instead, he knocks the door of Marta’s residence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   A small latina woman with wiry curly hair opens the front door at a crack, takes one look at Roy, and then slams the door shut. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Oh come on,” Jacob mutters. He slides his phone into his pocket then knocks the door louder. “Marta! Marta!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “She’s not giving you any money!” The woman who had opened the door cries out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Is Marta there? Tell her to hear us out! My parents are going to get a divorce if you don’t help us!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   A second later, the door opens again revealing a young girl with the same large brown eyes as the older woman. “A divorce? Is that true?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   With the door open wider than before, Jacob pushes through and enters the house. “Yeah maybe,” he says in response to her before flopping down on the nearest armchair and pulling out his phone again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy hovers on the doorstep. He puts his hand out to meet Marta, who pauses before shaking it tentatively. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Um, okay. I guess… take a seat?” Marta asks, as if it were a question. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy nods, and slowly enters the house. He refuses to use the walking stick, instead, lifting his leg when it gets too tired to carry the weight of the cast. Luckily the nearest empty armchair isn’t too far of a walk, and he heaves himself down in it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You look so different,” Marta says, still standing by the door. “Something is really the matter. Mama, be nice, I think. It’s okay. Will you bring us some tea?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta’s mother shoots Roy daggers, but obliges the request of her daughter and leaves the room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob kicks his legs over the arm of the chair while typing on his phone. He says nonchalantly, “We need money to hire the Texan detective.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta sits down on the couch in between Roy and Jacob in the arm chairs. She tugs at the sleeves of her sweater, pulling them over her knuckles. “Oh, is Donna cheating on you Walt?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Not yet…” Jacob answers for him, his eyes immovable from his phone. “Dad’s acting real weird, if you haven’t already noticed. He wants money so he can look for some guy called Lucas. Probably the dude who slipped him the roofie.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy fidgets with the hem of the denim jacket he was able to find in Walt’s closet. He feels Marta’s eyes on him, studying him. His cheeks flush not so much with embarrassment, but urgency. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Who is Lucas?” Marta asks Roy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “That’s the million dollar question… don’t you listen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I want to hear it from Walt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “My name…. My name isn’t Walt,” Roy says, his breath ragged. He hopes in saying what he’s going to say, they aren’t going to institutionalize him. “My name is Roy, and Lucas is my husband.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The phone slips out of Jacob’s hands. “What did you just say?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy’s cheeks flush deeper. He sets his jaw, trying to gather the confidence to continue. At that moment, Marta’s mother enters the room carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. She sets them down on the coffee table and before she can bow out of the room, Roy thanks her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He can feel them all staring at him. His knuckles clench, tight from stress. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You’ve… never acknowledged Mrs. Cabrera,” Jacob says, astounded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He doesn’t know what to say to this, but his suspicions about Walt being a rich, entitled asshole is confirmed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Walt… I mean -- Roy,” Marta says. She gets up and kneels on the floor beside Roy. It’s a gentle gesture, one lathered in kindness and tenderness and when she takes his hand in hers, he feels as if he could sob. He was expecting… he wasn’t sure what he was expecting of her but he was expecting no one to believe him, yet she seems to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Help me understand,” Marta says softly.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy looks at Jacob, who is Alton. He has to be. Or he isn’t. He’s older, and rude, not the brilliant, kind son he sent into The Everglades. “After saying goodbye to you,” Roy says, looking right into Alton’s blue eyes, “The military caught us. Me and Lucas… we got taken to the same prison. I didn’t know for a long time. They were…” He pauses. He thinks this is about the most he’s said in this world, and it’s something he’s never uttered to another soul in either world. But he’s started, and he can finish… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Prison? Military? You really are high!” Jacob cries, but he’s drawn to the edge of the seat engrossed in what Roy has to say. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta, still kneeling on the floor beside Roy, her hand gently over his, says softly, “Go on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy looks at the tea bag hanging out of the teapot. “There was a flood that helped us escape the prison. We built a cottage in the woods where no one could find us.” He turns his eyes to Marta. “I plan to go there. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to hire an SUV providing … providing Walt has a driver’s license.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “He -- hire?” Jacob questions in disgust.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Our cottage is very remote,” Roy explains. He feels big in this small house but it feels better than the vastness of Walt’s apartment. “Much of it would be off-road driving.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Off-roading? Can I come?” Jacob asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy blinks. “Yes, Alton.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Okay, that's the other thing. He keeps calling me Alton.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta looks between them, then stands up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I would like to drive,” Roy starts, casting his eyes down at the cage around his foot, “But I’ll need some help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Seriously? That’s all you want Benoit Blanc for? To be your personal chauffeur? Dad, just let me drive! I’m meant to be getting my license in three months anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Alton, I’m not losing you again to a car accident,” Roy snaps. His shoulders twang with the emotion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I don’t think I understand completely but I do believe Benoit Blanc will be able to help. I will call him” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy holds his wrist tight in one hand. “I don’t expect you to pay thousands of dollars for a detective. I’ll just need someone to drive me. I’ll direct.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Dad,” Jacob says. It’s Alton’s voice and it tugs at Roy’s heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I will call him,” Marta says of the detective. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>   “I thought we were going to Wisconsin, not Texas,” Jacob says as he stands in front of the conveyor belt. “Although I don’t know which is worse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’ve always wanted to go to Texas,” Marta says, turning to smile at the Southern detective, Benoit Blanc. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Mhm,” Blanc says, clearing his throat. “To get to the bottom of this, we have to start from the start.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Marta! There’s our suitcases,” Jacob cries, pointing at the pile of black suitcases coming around the U shaped conveyor belt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob stands back and lets Marta pull them off the belt, aided by both Benoit Blanc and Roy. Roy always knew that he would love Alton, and knew that there would be a chance that Alton might hate him for not fighting the ranch enough to remain a steady parenthood figure in his son’s life, but he never once contemplated that he might not like his own son. He has to remind himself that Jacob isn’t Alton, no matter how identical they appear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Thousands of people fill the airport moving this way and that. Suitcase wheels roll across the sleek floors like hockey pucks. Announcements boom overhead. LED screens flash advertisements. Cheery pop music emanates from the ceiling like a force of intense emotion. Roy pulls his baker boy cap down and retreats into the shelter of his sturdy denim jacket, the abrasiveness of the city setting over him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They hire an old SUV much to Jacob’s chagrin. Blanc likes the older models and Roy wants to keep the money of Marta’s that they spend to a minimum, even though the expenses have already become out of control with Marta insisting on coming with them. Blanc drives them out of the airport with a radio station playing 80s rock music out of the speakers at just under a whisper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Can we listen to something else?” Jacob asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta’s brown hair flies around the front passenger seat. Roy reclines further into his seat behind her. Blanc does not respond to Jacob, so he rolls his eyes and puts in ear buds for his own music. Roy cranks down the window once they’re out of the city and takes in the smell of his home state. It was his first time in the Dallas airport and he hopes it will be his last. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   After taking a break at a truck stop, the four of them pile back into the car, the dry bread and burnt taste of meat still on the corners of their mouths. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “This is boring,” Jacob says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The afternoon sun blasts through the car windows. The Alton Roy knew would be convulsing right now. Instead, it’s Roy who’s starting to feel sick. Not to the point where the world is splitting in two, but he feels as pale as Alton gets and like he could drink 200 gallons of water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Can I go home?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “We haven’t gotten to your Dad’s birthplace yet,” Marta says, turning around to give Jacob a reassuring look. “Don’t you want to see?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Not really… I’ve seen where Dad was born… </span>
  <em>
    <span>Boston</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Now, now,” Blanc chastices. “I understand your reservations, son, but I believe Miss Marta Cabrera has a true and honest heart and when she met with your father and heard the few words he had to say about his story, I believe that she believed Walt here’s -- Sorry,” Blanc parses a glance at Roy in the rearview mirror, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Roy’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> account. And on account of </span>
  <em>
    <span>her </span>
  </em>
  <span>belief and </span>
  <em>
    <span>her </span>
  </em>
  <span>imbursement of Roy in his mission to find this Lucas of his, I am here. And I am to understand that you, Jacob, have a role to play in Roy’s story too. And so, our roles are all </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitively </span>
  </em>
  <span>essential.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “It’s so confusing. Just leave me out of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “In time, the meaning to your role will reveal itself and in the meantime, enjoy your days off school and this beautiful countryside. Oh </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lord</span>
  </em>
  <span>, how I have missed it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The Texan air is no longer doing enough to keep himself from feeling sick. He ought to be finding Lucas on his own but his foot is still in this cast and his memory of Lucas feels like it’s slipping away with every passing second. As if his life with Lucas was the dream, and this is his reality: a world where he is the son of a wealthy author, a former chairman of a publishing company, and in which he had handed over the most amount of money he has ever held in his hands to a private detective - a world where such lives and actions are more presently real than being embraced by the love of his life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   At least Marta and Blanc seem to be genuine. Marta’s naivety is as compelling as her large brown eyes and button nose and Blanc’s taking to suspenders and a tan trench coat as stereotypical as an old fashioned detective but neither of them bear the entitlement that Jacob seems to carry which is a breath of fresh air for Roy. If he were to confide in others more about his troubles, he feels more comfortable doing so in this company as opposed to Jacob’s mother and family.  He just needed someone to believe him. And now he has two. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   Blanc wants them to go straight to Roy’s parents’ house but Roy wants to see Alton’s mom’s house first, which Blanc concedes to because it’s one part of the origin story that Roy’s trying to tell. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   His eyes are starting to burn as if he’s been staring into the bright hot flames of a fire too long but he perseveres, pushing through the pain to go into Sarah’s mom’s house and see photos of a family on the wall that she was barely a part of. The family resemblance is striking and ended with Roy’s bloodline into Alton. He ended the round faced, low brow, cherub-like genetics but she gave him blue eyes and a strength that Roy only knew how to have too late. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He sits down on Alton’s grandmother’s floral couch and he wonders if she ever met Alton. She must have. Sarah was born on the Ranch. It was her mother who fled and abandoned Sarah when she was a teenager. Roy spent most of his time locked up in that room on the Ranch so he doesn’t know if Sarah ever made contact with her again. If she even told her mother that she had had Alton. Would she see Sarah in Alton’s eyes?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’m sorry, who did you say you were again?” Mrs Clemens, as her name is now, questions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She looks at Roy. Roy looks at Alton. Alton looks at his phone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc clears his throat. “Ahem, my name is Benoit Blanc. I’m a private investigator--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The mention of his position immediately bristles Mrs. Clemens. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Interesting… Do you have something to hide?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Mrs Clemens’ shoulders tense. She puts down her tea on the coffee table. “Oh, no… I just… Don’t have a lot of… </span>
  <em>
    <span>trust</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the capabilities of private investigators.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc frowns. “And now why’s that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Well…” Mrs Clemens glances at a large metal ornament of a chicken which is balanced on top of the mantelpiece. She looks back to the group of four guests in her house. “And who are you three?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “My name is Marta,” Marta says, gesturing to herself and then the others as she introduces them. “And this is Jacob Thrombey, and Wal-- I mean, Roy. Roy… Tomlin. Does that… sound familiar?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Mrs Clemens pauses. “Thrombey… You know… </span>
  <em>
    <span>That</span>
  </em>
  <span> rings a bell… I wonder why….”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta’s eyes shine. “Harlan Thrombey, the mystery novelist, is Jacob’s grandfather.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Oh! Harlan Thrombey! I love his books.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Yeah, you and every other person in this country,” Jacob states. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   During this exchange, Blanc had stalked over to the mantelpiece and from behind the chicken ornament, he slides out a picture frame that had been obscured by the oddity of the ornament. He observes the photo, then says, “Now why would you hide such a pretty little girl behind a steel rooster?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Mrs Clemens touches her chest and looks away, then returns her gaze at the photo frame in Blanc’s hands, her face alight with a pink, embarrassed blush. “That’s my… my daughter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc hands the frame to Roy. He recognises the 8 year old, a mess of wispy blond hair and pinched blue eyes as Sarah, though he never saw her at that age before, and never imagined her to be in a setting like sitting at the very dining table right behind Mrs Clemens’ living room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta leans over Roy’s shoulder and looks at the photo. “She’s so cute! Look at her cheeks.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Yes, she was adorable,” Mrs Clemens says, her voice choking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob takes the photo from Roy’s hands and inspects it in his lap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “She kind of looks like you as a kid, Jacob,” Marta comments. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “How long ago was this photo taken?” Blanc questions Mrs Clemens, standing in front of the cold fireplace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Oh… a very long time ago. My Sarah disappeared not long after that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “As I suspected…” Blanc states. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy nods. “Was she diagnosed with epilepsy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “What was that now?” Blanc asks, faltering. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Mrs Clemens flinches. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “But nothing helped,” Roy starts, “She would have fits.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Mrs Clemens doesn’t take her eyes away from Roy. She forces back tears but they well out over her cheeks. “Yes. She would have episodes…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “The whole house would shake…” Roy offers. His eyes are burning so much, he can hardly focus on her, as if she’s flickering in and out of reality. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Tears stream down Mrs Clemen’s face. “How did you know? I’ve never met you before.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “The mystery thickens…” Marta comments. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Or gets crazier,” Jacob corrects. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You need to leave, now,” Mrs Clemens tells them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Did Sarah go to the other world?” Roy asks her. He sees her and she’s trembling violently, like the way Elden’s house had shattered and torn apart under the force of Alton’s gateway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Mrs Clemens wrenches out a fit of despair. She covers her face, crying through the gaps of her fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Did she go to the world on top of ours?” He asks, wrenching his eyes shut. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You need to leave!”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>   The farm that Calvin Meyer built the Ranch on has become scattered artefacts underneath the skeleton framework of the beginnings of a new suburb. There was no ranch, no cult arrests in 2016. It was always just a farm, acquired by land developers in the past year to increase the housing supply. Nobody that Blanc interrogates has even heard of Calvin Meyer, let alone Alton Meyer, the mysterious boy who was supposedly kidnapped from the ranch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They find Roy’s house next but he can see the outline of his mother through the car windows, through the windows of the house, through the glass tiled divider between the living room and the kitchen and he can’t do it. It hurts to look. He clamps the balls of his palms against his eyes, the feeling of red, dry eyes intensified ten fold, a hundred fold. He grunts trying to subdue the pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “What's wrong with him?” Alton asks, sounding as alarmed as Roy would feel when blue light would unleash out of Alton’s eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “We have to take him to the hospital,” Blanc says, prepping his hands on the steering wheel, about to turn the car 180 degrees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “No… no hospitals. I can do it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   With his eyes still shut, he clutches onto the car door and opens it. He feels one shoe stand on the gutter and his cast step down slightly higher. He opens his eyes to calculate how he’s going to swing the weight of the cast with his walking but the sun hits his pupils like a laser and all he sees is white. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>   “Help me shut the curtains,” Alton tells a woman who looks only vaguely familiar to Roy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Okay,” she says in a spanish accent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “We need to black out all of the light,” Alton, no, Jacob, instructs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The brightness near his face snuffs out when Jacob pulls the curtains over the window next to his bed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “It’s as I expected,” Blanc contemplates. “The closer he gets to what he thinks is his true origin, the harder it is for him to face it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc is sitting on the bed opposite Roy, his trench coat off, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone. He doesn’t look like Lucas in the slightest but Roy thinks of him. His eyes are still sore. Crusty, weary. He closes his eyes and lets his tears wash away into his sleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He wakes up after some time. The room is pitch black. He has no idea what time it is. He sits up, slowly, the weight of his cast causing the cheap motel bed to creak. After a few minutes, his eyes have adjusted to the small room and he can make out the shape of Marta sleeping in the single bed adjacent to him, Blanc on the floor between the beds with a spare pillow and a blanket draped over him, and… and he can’t see Alton. Panic spikes and drums in his chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy grabs a portion of the curtain next to him and rips it aside, bearing the room to the dazzling starry night sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Woah.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy follows the sound of the croaky gasp and spots Alton’s head having popped up from the end of his bed. He had only been tucked away in the corner of the room, invisible by Roy’s position on the bed. Nevertheless, the fear of a second loss overwhelms him. He tosses his cast bound foot aside so that he can launch himself towards Alton, throwing his arms around his son. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Woah!” Alton croaks, louder this time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The other two in the room don’t stir. Alton is stiff in his arms, and bigger. For so long, Roy had tried not to think about what it would be like for Alton to have grown up. He had had to face the fact that Alton </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> growing up, he just wasn’t in the right world to see it. And now here he is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   It’s blissful, until Roy feels a sob wrack through Alton’s rib cage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He pulls Alton back and looks at him in the moonlight, searching under the passing stars and shooting satellites and the mid-grey in between the nebulous night sky to find out the source of his son’s sadness. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You never hug me like this…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   It’s Alton who opened his mouth but it’s Jacob who spoke. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Like you really love me.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>   Having spent two days away from Boston, Jacob ends up having to give up using his phone because his family members keep trying to call him every second of the day to check up on Walt. Marta has to assure them that he hasn’t tried to kidnap Jacob and that she and Benoit Blanc are with both Walt and Jacob, but with a new drama to focus on, various threats are made and they are now expecting to be joined by at least Walt’s sister, Linda, so long as no one slips and accidentally tells Linda their exact location. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   It’s for the best, in some ways. Roy wants to sort this out faster than anyone, and he feels that pressure from the family will help Blanc be more efficient. There’s also the matter of his health deteriorating. He’s not ready to admit it to anyone but he feels as if the walking stick is not enough to keep himself steady on his feet, having to rely on Marta’s help to get around. She had got him into the car to Lucas’ place just fine but when it comes to facing getting out, he doesn’t have the energy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Maybe it is best that you stay in the car,” Marta suggests, eyeing him with worry. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’ll stay with him,” Jacob says, strapping the seatbelt back over his lap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc starts toward Lucas’ house with Marta, but she stops and trots back to the car. She opens up his side of the door and asks, “Is there anything you want us to find out? In particular?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You’re finding out if this is Lucas’ house,” Jacob says flatly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Marta ignores him. She touches the top of Roy’s hand which is gripping his thigh. “If Lucas is here… do you want to see him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Tears prick Roy’s eyes. The thought itself should be enough to get him to stand up but he just can’t bring himself to do it. He can’t even speak from being so overwhelmed. He nods slightly, and leans back in the car and closes his eyes. He feels the tip of Marta’s fingers retract from his hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The sky is overcast today so the sun isn’t so bright, but still, he pulls his cap down and the collar of his jacket up to his chin, and he turns away from the window, facing the inside of the car. Distantly he can hear Blanc’s heavy drawl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “So… you’re really not from this world… are you?” Jacob asks him quietly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy cracks his eyelids open and peers at Jacob. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I thought you were just being crazy since you had that fall… but you hugged me like you did last night the day before your fall. That’s…” Jacob scratches skin on the top of his wrist. “That’s when I should have realised that you weren’t... My dad. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy pauses. How can he say that he’s sorry that Walt doesn’t love Jacob as much as he loves Alton? He can’t know for sure. He can’t know that Walt doesn’t immensely love his son, but just doesn’t show it the way Roy does. He was starved of it, robbed of it. He couldn’t be a part of Alton’s life so every moment he gets with him is a treasure. How can he rub that in Jacob’s face? He would never. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’m sorry that I’m not who you think I am either,” Jacob says. “Alton. It’s a cool name.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy smiles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Lucas always liked that name too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They could never be together in Lucas’ house but in the privacy of walls that could contain them, they would lie in each other’s arms. Roy never much liked thinking of the future. He’s never been very good at it. Always liked being present, but Lucas liked to dream. And he would dream of a house for the two of them, out where no one could reach them. In a forest, with a fireplace and the comfiest couch in the world to sit on in front of a roaring fire in the winter. And he didn’t know how but they would have a kid or two. A girl called Lily and a boy called Alton. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He never told Sarah the dream part of it but she wanted to know what Roy would name their son and that’s what he said. Alton. Lucas only knew Alton for seven days but he would sometimes say it was better than he could have imagined. Alton was better than he could dream of. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “So… Lucas is really… he’s really your husband?” Jacob asks tentatively. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Yes.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy’s eyes have slipped shut again but he smiles, thinking of his love. He didn’t have an interest in getting married but when Lucas proposed to him, he knew that a chapel filled with just the two of them wouldn’t feel lonely because he had Lucas. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Then… how come you think that I’m your son?” Jacob asks, getting confused by his own question he adds, “How come Alton is your son if you’re gay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy’s eyes slide open. He stares at the ceiling of the car. It’s a conversation he didn’t think he would need to have with Alton because he would have understood the nature of the Ranch. In a way, Roy assumed that Alton already knew how he would come into the world, as Sarah knew that she needed to give birth. It was something not in his power to control, and yet he was aware of it. Like a fact. From Roy and Sarah he would have come into their world, and from Roy and Sarah, he would leave it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I guess… I have to do some reading,” Jacob says, taking out his phone and immediately declining a phone call from his mother. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The sun doesn’t feel any less shaded by the clouds but in another place, in another world, the wind peels the clouds off the sky and shines the light down on the car like a spotlight. He starts to shake. Jacob’s phone vibrates and beeps incessantly. The car radio switches on and scrolls to random stations on its own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob looks at him in alarm. Roy yanks his head into his lap. He’s hearing voices. Familiar voices, but ones so far away, like a distant memory. Voices of Lucas’ Dad when he was here all of those years ago. A vocal warning that kept a barrier over Lucas’ house, that kept him away. It kept him away, but not away from Lucas. Those hateful words that were thrown at them rush at him, blanket him and suffocate him. He clings onto the door and tries to open it. It’s vibrating under his touch. The door flings out from under him as if it’s been torn off. He gulps in the fresh air, and he doesn’t exactly hear Lucas, but he feels him like a layer of his own skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “He’s here,” Roy gasps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Uh, Dad?!” Alton cries. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He sounds petrified. Roy looks at him, and in the reflection of the window behind him, he sees Lucas’ Dad careening for him, bolting across the front yard with a hunting rifle in hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy turns around. He’s hanging out of the car, his hands planted on the frame where the car door once was. And he sees Lucas in place of the angry father. The likeness is uncanny. But he’s old now, greying, a hunch in his back and he’s gearing up his gun, aiming it at Roy. He tries to close his eyes to protect himself but it does nothing. He still sees, and he still sees Lucas above the light. The car around him wobbles like a living thing, the suspension cut loose and the headlights flash and there’s an ear shattering sound. Everyone is stamping their hands over their ears and then, as if the car is still and untouched by magic, Roy sees Lucas climb into the front seat and drive away in a ghost car that splits off from this one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy lets out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding in. The deafening sound quickly snuffs out. The car comes to a standstill. And Lucas’ father takes up his gun again right before Blanc tackles him to the ground. They wrestle for a moment, then when Marta helps to remove the gun from the man’s grasp, he suddenly falls lax. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “What’s going on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc keeps his elbow square in the middle of the man’s chest, pinning him to the dry lawn. “You were about to murder this man,” Blanc says, nodding to Roy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Lucas’ father’s eyes glaze over when he looks at Roy. “No… I don’t know who he is…” He wipes his mouth and stares at the driver’s seat through the open car, staring at the place where Lucas’s ghost was. “There was someone else here… My son…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “But you said inside that you did not have any children,” Marta says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    The man blinks at Marta standing beside him. “I don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc lets the man go, seeing that he has calmed down now. He brushes dry grass off him and looks at the discarded car door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “How are we gonna get the deposit back now?” Blanc asks in disbelief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’d appreciate it if ya’ll got off my property now,” Lucas’ father says. “I’m about done answering your questions.”</span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>   Blanc stops at a hardware store and Roy picks up some things to seal the car door back on. It doesn’t need to open, it just needs to be shut so that they can keep driving. Sparks fly so close to his eyes but he’s felt worse, and seen better through light than ever. He rushes the job but he needs to. He can feel that Lucas is on the move again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He discards the powertools aside, leaving a drill spinning as it’s still plugged into the wall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “That’s dangerous,” Blanc chastises, but he jumps in the car upon Roy’s haste and they keep driving along the I-35. He can feel that they’re behind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Can’t we fly to the cottage?” Jacob asks. He’s hunched in the back passenger seat beside Roy, his head in some comics that he’d picked out at the gas station. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “There’s probably no airport nearby,” Marta offers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I still don’t know that it would serve us any results going there,” Blanc says, bringing the topic up for the third time today. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road that rushes beneath the beaten Jeep. “We’ve established that Lucas was never born to the parents you identified Roy, and your parents didn’t bear you either. The woman you claim to be Alton’s mother disappeared as a little girl. There’s less and less to corroborate your story.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “But you guys believe him, right?” Jacob asks, discarding his comic. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Yes, I do,” Marta says, turning around to look at the two in the back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc eyes her in the rearview mirror. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Lucas drives longer than he should. An 18 hour drive that ought to take three or four days for one person, takes two. It upsets Roy because it’s dangerous. He doesn’t want to lose Lucas in his old world before he can even get back to it. He’s so close. They could be driving in the exact same spot, on the exact same stretch of road. The world he is in right on top of Lucas’. He reaches out, tries to grab onto any part of Lucas but instead he finds Blanc, who lets Roy hold his elbow for a while, before changing gears and having Roy’s hand slide away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The loss wrenches Roy’s heart. A cry of despair wrenches out of him involuntarily. Marta turns herself right around in her chair and reaches to hold Roy, takes his hand and asks Blanc, “Can’t we go any faster? I’ll pay the tickets.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc sets his lips thin. “I doesn’t add up. I want to believe our Walt has been misplaced by Roy from a different dimension but it suspends belief. I just don’t think it’s possible for the cottage Roy speaks of to exist.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “...That’s why you didn’t want to go there right away…” Jacob says slowly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy half nods. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob gently removes Marta’s hands from Roy so that she can sit back in her chair without twisting her entire body. Now it’s Jacob’s hands around Roy’s and he trembles from the natural warmth that comes from him. Not the light of another world, not the blasting vision from something made by God. It’s Jacob, and somewhere in there is Alton. Somewhere, Alton has his hands on all of this and is helping them go where he needs to go, guiding him back to Lucas. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><hr/><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>He sleeps when Lucas sleeps, but wakes up after Lucas has left the same hotel room that the four of them slept in. There’s only 300 miles to go and it feels like Lucas is slipping away from him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “He’s getting weaker,” Marta says, handing Jacob another water bottle for him to slowly tip water into Roy’s mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “We really oughtta take him to the hospital,” Blanc says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “No, just keep going, we’re almost there,” Jacob says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The woods encroach the dirt road, taking no issue with uprooting parts of the curve. Blanc drives cautiously, keeps straining to see that the path is clear and keeps flitting his eyes to the rearview to check on Roy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy feels as thin as paper. The water that Jacob, at times gently pours into his mouth, and at others, haphazardly, jolted by the wheels riding over roots and rocks. He knows that he’s close. He’s driven down this winding forested road countless times. The cottage should be just ahead, whittled into a space that they made for themselves. But it’s not that the trees are a different colour or too overgrown, it’s that nothing is feeling right. He could disappear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Stop!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc slams his foot on the breaks. Marta throws her hands on the dashboard to keep her from going through the windscreen. The water bottle flings out of Jacob’s hand and dispenses over the back of Marta’s chair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy puts his hand on the car door and jiggles it, an exasperated cry coming out of his mouth when he remembers that he had sealed it shut. He turns, but Jacob is already climbing out and making space for him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Marta, help me,” Jacob says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’m coming.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Blanc gets out and looks around the lonely dirt road banked by closely grown trees. “There’s nothing here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “It’s further in,” Roy rasps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Were you fugitives?” Blanc questions him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy doesn’t answer. Marta leans in the other side of the car and helps Roy out. She’s on his bad side, the side with a cast on his foot, and on the other is Jacob who is too short but it’s good to hold onto him. Roy takes them through the forest. He’s terribly slow, a quickening in him that is caged by the weak, broken body he inhabits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   His cast foot catches on a branch and he stumbles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Come on, we can do this,” Marta says, but she wears a face of worry and he wonders if he’s going to make it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Then, on the outskirts of where the clearing out to start, a tremendous feeling intumesces inside Roy. A feeling like a flat surface of liquid bubble is slowly being blown into, and a small bubble grows and grows, expanding bigger and bigger, encompassing him, encompassing the two people around him, and then Blanc, and then the thick forests in front of him fade out into a clearing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He tries to walk forward, rigid by Marta and Jacob’s fear of what they’re all currently witnessing. In the centre of the clearing is his little cottage. He can’t see Lucas yet and he can’t feel him either. Where is he?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Wait!” Jacob cries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob keeps Roy from walking fully inside the pink and blue bubble of light that floats in a semi-sphere form over the cottage and the surrounding clearing, over the house that looks empty, abandoned. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy looks down into his eyes. He remembers when he and Lucas were driving down that airstrip, the rubber of the wheels had burnt off and it was just the bare metal sparking along the asphalt. And above them was this enormous concrete archway, like something out of a sci fi movie. And when the car flipped, and the shell of it skidded across the ground, there were glimpses of figures standing at the edge of the forest line. These shimmering blue figures, watching from safety. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I have to go,” Roy tells Alton. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob looks at him back, blue eyes meeting blue. Roy grips Jacob’s shoulder, then steps through the translucent barrier of light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I want to go with you, please, let me go with you,” Jacob begs, while Marta holds him back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Fully inside the shimmering sphere, he can feel life coming back to him. Colour back to his cheeks, a rigour in his muscles that was made from years of manual labour, lost in the world where he was the head of a publishing giant. Even the cast on his foot seems to be no bother. It disintegrates off his foot with each further step he takes into the world that’s his. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Dad!” Alton cries. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy bites back tears. He tries to focus on opening the door of the cottage but he hears Alton’s voice and he turns around. In that instant, the sphere of glowing light expands for miles. Blanc, Marta and Jacob are rendered motionless, unable to move from the wondrous sight that is unfolding around them. Those fantastic concrete structures dot over the treetops. Brilliant oscillating architectural feats, made from engineering that neither world Roy has lived in has been able to accomplish yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Roy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He blinks and in front of him is Lucas, having appeared like an apparition. Roy throws his arms around Lucas and embraces him tight, clawing onto him, feeling the sturdiness of Lucas, the warmth, the reality. He nuzzles his face in Lucas’ shoulder, taking his face away to breathe, and taking in the sight of the leaf-laden ground in front of their cottage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Then his heart leaps in his throat when he sees Jacob break from from Marta and start to bolt towards him. He pushes away from Lucas, who turns with gruff confusion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Is that... Alton??” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Jacob is reaching out for Roy, his thin fingers just inches away from Roy and then the bubble pops before their fingers can touch. The sculpted buildings vanish, the thickets of trees blink white with winter. And Lucas finds him again. A hand on Roy’s elbow, on the back of his neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Come here,” Lucas says, taking Roy into his arms again. “I knew I hadn't lost you forever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Roy sobs into Lucas’ hold. Relieved, and torn. Water streams from his eyes and settles the fire, but he has a feeling that this won’t be the last time that he’ll see Alton. They’ll find a way to each other, when the time is right. </span>
</p>
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